


Spinning in Place

by UpsideAround



Series: A Disk That Skips [1]
Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Light Angst, Post-Squip, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-12 03:57:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11153754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UpsideAround/pseuds/UpsideAround
Summary: No, Jeremy wasn't doing okay. Not at all. He still felt like the SQUIP was there, critiquing his every move. And he sure as hell was not getting a good nights sleep anymore. Every day he woke up tired. Every night he turned out the light and never expected to get more than a couple hours of sleep.Not like he was going to tell anyone. Not even Micheal.





	Spinning in Place

**Author's Note:**

> because there aren't enough fics of Rich and Jeremy bonding over their squip experience
> 
> I take a line from the Audio recording and recite it here, but I was too lazy to double check if I had it exactly right, so my apologies if I don't.
> 
> Huge shout-out to my beta! You can find her writing [here](http://archiveofourown.org/users/VenezuelanWriter/pseuds/VenezuelanWriter/works)

Some nights, Jeremy couldn’t sleep. Some nights, he tossed and turned and some nights, he would lay there, awake, paralyzed.

On nights like those, his first step was to fumble around for his phone. He’d grip it tightly, as if it was a lifeline. His second step was to text Michael. He wouldn’t ever say what was really going on, but a “hey, what’s up?” text was enough to let Jeremy convince himself that he was trying to get help.

The truth was, it was a sort of self-inflicted torture he forced himself through on those nights. The nights where he couldn’t get the SQUIP’s voice out of his head. The nights where he couldn’t get his own voice out of his head. The exhausting, neverending nights where he would lie awake, thinking about how the words felt in his mouth when he called Michel a loser that Halloween night.

_“Get out of my way, loser.”_

The worst part wasn’t even that Jeremy still heard his SQUIP whispering every insecurity Jeremy had into his ear. The worst part wasn’t that he still saw his SQUIP out of the corner of his eye, or that he still flinched every time he found himself thinking about porn. The worst part was that the moment where he rejected Michael, the SQUIP hadn’t even been in his head. That was all Jeremy.

And god, did it kill him. Michael said he had forgiven Jeremy, but he still thought that the SQUIP had been the one in control during that moment.

So Jeremy really had two problems. He still wasn’t being honest with Michel, and the SQUIP still haunted him.

Jeremy remembered the first time he tried to talk to Rich about it. Rich was over for some reason that had been lost to time and memory, but that’s not important. What’s important is that when Jeremy asked, Rich flinched for a moment before looking back with shock and hurt in his eyes.

_“Do you still hear him too?” Jeremy asked._

_Rich jumped in his seat slightly. He didn’t answer._

_“Come on, you know what I mean.”_

_Rich cleared his throat. “Sure.”_

He never said anything else about it.

Rich was the only one Jeremy had ever considered talking to about his SQUIP problems.

He had tried to talk to Michael once, but it didn’t work out well. As soon as Jeremy brought it up, Michael pulled him over to the TV to play video games. Dismissive.

It didn’t even hurt because he still felt guilty about Halloween. It hurt because Jeremy was drowning in his own worry and suffocating in his own memories. He needed to tell somebody, and who better than his best-friend-since-childhood?

But when Jeremy tried to talk about it, he was almost ignored. And that was just the final nail in his coffin. He let the voice in his head convince him that Michael didn’t care, and that if he wanted to stay friends he better be careful what he says in the future. _We don’t want Michael to think you’re a loser, now do we, Jeremy?_

So he never tried that again.

This all leads us to the present, where Jeremy found himself fumbling his way through school after pulling an all-nighter. His vision flickered as he grabbed a pair of books out of his locker. He turned and found himself face-to-face with Michael.

“Jeremy, my buddy, how’s it going?”

Jeremy grinned and sighed. “Alright. Tired.”

Michael pulled off his headphones. “Did you sleep at all last night?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

That was a blatant lie because Jeremy knew exactly how much sleep he got. He knew for a fact that he had spent the whole night staring at his ceiling and checking the time every five minutes. He had spent the whole night listening to the ghost of his SQUIP and waiting for it to be over. He had spent the whole night being told how much of a loser he was, and counting down the minutes until he could distract himself with interactions with people.

Michel narrowed his eyes. “I don’t know why I asked if you’re not going to tell me what’s going on with you.”

“What? But, but I—”

“I’ll see you after school,” Michael said, marching off. Jeremy never thought that an invitation to hang out could sound so venomous.

He stood at his locker, shell shocked for a moment.

“What was that about?”

Jeremy turned around. Rich was standing behind him.

Jeremy sighed. “What the hell do you want?” he snapped. “I’m really not in the mood for much of anything right now.”

Rich paused, contemplating something. “Let’s ditch class and have a talk.”

Jeremy didn’t have the energy to refuse. He shut his locker and let himself be led outside. His breath fogged in the winter air. Rich walked to the bleachers next to the football field. He climbed the staircase to reach the highest bleacher. Rich sat down, staring ahead and not acknowledging Jeremy.

Jeremy stood next to Rich. He stared at him incredulously for a moment before sitting down. The cold metal stung like ice.

“You couldn’t pick somewhere warmer to talk?”

Rich shrugged and didn’t reply.

“So you won’t even say anything?”

Again, Jeremy got silence in return.

Jeremy scoffed. “I don’t know why I even came out here if—”

“You haven't been sleeping very well. If you’re lucky, you get a few hours. You can’t sleep because every time you’re alone, you hear him.” Rich sighed and stuck his hands between his knees. His shoulders tensed as he stared at some far-off point beyond the football field. “You feel like you’re going crazy, but you don’t want to tell anybody about it. You need to cut off your friends and family because you feel guilty for hurting them and you’re afraid you’ll do it again.”

Jeremy’s jaw dropped. “How did you— I mean, yeah, but—”

Rich finally turned his head to face Jeremy. “Because the same thing happened to me and I don’t want to see you make the same mistakes.”

“Mistakes? What mistakes? Wait, what do you mean by ‘happened’? Past tense?”

Rich sighed. “I didn’t talk to anybody about what was going on. Jake could tell something was wrong, and when he confronted me about it, I told him to fuck off.”

Jeremy didn’t say anything. He had noticed how Rich walked alone in the hallways nowadays. Or, when he walked with people, how he seemed quiet and disconnected.

“The SQUIP you’re hearing isn’t real, you know,” Rich said. “He doesn’t go away when you get wasted.”

“Yeah, I know. I—” Jeremy took a shuddering breath. “I tried.” Drinking had only made the SQUIP louder and meaner.

“Doesn’t control your body either. And thank god for that.”

Jeremy found himself laughing. “You know, that was probably the worst part. Trying to do something, and finding yourself stuck in place.”

Rich smiled slightly, then stopped and sighed. He faced forward again. “Or trying to not do something.”

Jeremy paused. “If having a SQUIP for a few months fucked me up this badly, how are you doing?” he asked carefully.

Rich laughed at that. “I’m doing pretty badly, my dude. I lost my best friend and still hear the SQUIP telling me I did the right thing. That it’s not cool to be emotional. That no one really wants to hear about it, and I’ll be better liked if I don’t say anything.”

Jeremy almost flinched at that. What Rich was saying sounded shockingly similar to what he heard every morning when he got out of bed and every night when he tried to sleep.

“Don’t listen to the SQUIP, Jeremy,” Rich said, exhaling with a note of finality. “Talk to someone about what’s going on. Michael, your dad, a shrink. Hell, you could even talk to me about it.”

Jeremy stopped and looked across the football field. He gripped the bleacher he was sitting on to stop his hands from shaking.

His dad might think he was crazy, and Jeremy didn’t want to know what sort of psycho-analysis he’d get from a therapist. Maybe he’d find a good metaphor to describe what happened eventually.

But Michael and Rich—they already knew. They knew exactly what happened, and maybe it was time for Jeremy to breathe past his SQUIP telling him what to do.

Quietly, in the back of his mind, Jeremy found himself internally chanting a small mantra.

_I don’t need you. You’re gone. Leave me be._

A soft breeze blew past.

“I will if you will,” Jeremy said finally.

Rich gave Jeremy a small smile. “I’m trying.”

**Author's Note:**

> Please comment, both good things and bad! I appreciate constructive criticism
> 
> You can also find me on [tumblr](http://upsidearound.tumblr.com)


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